Hindsight Foresight Insight

“Blue french fries. A colorless soda that tastes funny. A frozen soup-and-sandwich convenience food that turned out to be inconveniently labor intensive.

“These products not only failed in the marketplace, but did so predictably, at least in the eyes of Calvin L. Hodock, a marketing guru whose ‘Why Smart Companies Do Dumb Things’ is all about the many ways that innovation can go wrong. Mr. Hodock knows a thing or two about the subject, and his book offers considerable wisdom, some of it conventional and some of it not…

“Mr. Hodock is especially good on the subject of defective market research and the self-deceptions practiced by new-product teams determined to march ahead with a dubious idea despite red flags raised by focus groups and others…

“Worst of all, marketers are just human. ‘People fall in love with what they create,’ Mr. Hodock says. ‘All too often that love is blind . . . normally rational people become evangelical salesmen for their dreams rather than practical, objective business executives’ …

“[One] cliche Mr. Hodock employs -- that companies should ‘stick to their knitting’ -- gets to one of the book's limitations: The author is speaking with the advantage of hindsight. Every impending disaster seems obvious, every success predictable, as when Mr. Hodock praises Stokely Van Camp (‘an obscure processor and marketer of fruits and vegetables’) for launching Gatorade. One wonders, though, what his attitude toward Apple would have been a few years ago when the company tossed its knitting aside and plunged into making iPods and marketing music online…

“The truth is, it's hard to know what's really a foolish venture until the thing fails or succeeds.

“Neither does Mr. Hodock deal with a larger question: Do U.S. companies experience too many innovation failures or too few? Too few such failures, after all, might mean that companies weren't taking enough risks.”

(“Business Bookshelf: Seemed Like a Good Idea Inc.” Daniel Akst. Wall Street Journal: February 6, 2008. pg. D.8)

WHAT IS THE UNMET NEED? How will we distinctively fulfill that need? How is our alternative more attractive to consumers than other options available to them? Will they pay for it? How can we fulfill the need for less than the price they are willing to pay?